The New Second Home

By JENNIFER A. KINGSON

Published: June 28, 2012

MANY of them have carpeting, heating and air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor lighting, elaborate music and entertainment systems. Some are even eco-friendly, with solar panels or planted green roofs.

In fact, the only superfluous accessory in the modern doghouse may be the dog.

Take, for instance, the Palladian-style mini-mansion that Glenna and Ed Hall bought at a charity auction three years ago for about $300. With Jeffersonian columns that match the ones on their home in Roanoke, Va., the two-foot-tall doghouse makes a perfect accent for the garden. No one seems to mind that the garden is off-limits to Maggie May, their 28-pound whippet-borzoi mix -- least of all Maggie May.

''We bought the house because it looks a lot like our house,'' said Mrs. Hall, 66, a retired interior designer. ''Maggie's never been in it. She's a house dog.''

Traditionally, doghouses were where dogs actually lived, separate from the family. But now that dogs are increasingly considered members of the family, their homes are becoming more like second homes -- and in some cases, they're entirely ornamental. Sure, there are still plenty of doghouses built for dogs to live in. But there are also an impressive number built the way Christian Louboutin makes shoes: you can walk in them (sort of), but clearly that's not the point.

As Michelle Pollak, an interior designer who creates custom doghouses under the name La Petite Maison, observed: ''Half our clients say, 'Hey, we'd like a replica of our home for the dog,' and half say, 'This is the dream house we've always envisioned but couldn't afford in real life' -- like a French palace for the French poodle.''

No detail is too small, right down to the hand-painted portrait of the dog in residence. For the supermodel Rachel Hunter's showpiece doghouse in the Los Angeles area, Ms. Pollak supplied hand-painted wallcovering dotted with pawprints and bones, as well as framed pictures of dogs. Her business partner, a builder named Alan Mowrer, installed wrought-iron light fixtures and terra-cotta flooring. ''Alan had to hand-make every tile of the Mediterranean roof,'' Ms. Pollak said.

The average price of their doghouses is about $5,000 or $6,000, she said, though it's not unheard of for people to spend north of $25,000. (Ms. Hunter's was more than $16,000, Ms. Pollak said, although she could not recall an exact figure.)

Another client, Guillermo Gonz?s, is a 43-year-old entrepreneur who lives outside Austin, Tex., in a 5,000-square-foot Victorian-inspired home with four pet pigs. The ''boys,'' as Mr. Gonz?s refers to them, are 4-year-old Vietnamese potbellieds, Augustus (120 pounds) and Vito (95 pounds), who have fearsome tusks but sweet dispositions, he says. They live in a specially built 300-square-foot addition to the house furnished with hay and blankets.

But the ''girls,'' Cherry and Abby, 6-month-old micro-minis that weigh no more than seven pounds each, sleep in a six-foot-square replica of Mr. Gonz?s's home that sits in the corner of his safari-themed living room, not far from taxidermied busts of a zebra and an impala.

''The corner I put it in, it looks like kind of a plantation farm in a safari in South Africa,'' Mr. Gonz?s said.

The back story? Mr. Gonz?s had a business partner with a bulldog named Tank, and envisioned the doghouse, for which he paid $2,500 at a charity auction, as a gift for them. But Tank died before he could move in, so the house went to the pigs.

''Originally, I was just going to put it in the backyard,'' Mr. Gonz?s said. ''But it's so beautiful that I didn't want it to get destroyed by the weather.''

Such excess can be an invitation to criticism, but Ms. Pollak, the interior designer, offered a quick rebuttal. ''People will come and say, 'This is such a waste of money, why would anybody do this?' '' she said. ''All I can say is that if you have the money, what's the difference between spending it on a pet house or on a piece of diamond jewelry?''

Besides, she said, many of her clients build houses for dogs they have either rescued or adopted from shelters. One client, in fact, had a disabled rescue dog for which Ms. Pollak and Mr. Mowrer created a handicapped-accessible home. ''Alan adjusted all of the windows and the doors to allow the dog to see out the window,'' she said, ''even if he was lying down.''

DOGHOUSE design tends to be popular with architects and home builders, who sometimes refer to it as ''barkitecture'' and donate their creations to charity auctions that raise money for animal shelters. Designers say they love doghouses because they're small and fun and allow lots of room for creativity.

As Brian Pickard, an architect in Philadelphia, put it: ''If I build a doghouse and somebody is anticipating that it's going to last 10 years in their backyard, it's different from designing a house that somebody is expecting will last for 50 years. I can be more experimental.''

Mr. Pickard, 29, got his start as an architecture student at Ohio State University, designing a modernist doghouse inspired by the work of the Swiss architect Mario Botta. He called it the (Sub)urban doghouse and gave it to his parents for their chocolate lab, Nash.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article last Thursday about elaborate doghouses misspelled the surname of a dog owner who commissioned such a dwelling. He is Dave Shahriari, not Sharihari.